TEHRAN (Iran News) –Iran’s thermal power plants’ electricity generation capacity reached 72,000 megawatts (MW), an official with the country’s Thermal Power Plants Holding Company (TPPH) announced.

Mohammad Ramezani, the acting head of the company’s projects development department, also said that private sector accounts for 68 percent of the electricity generated by the thermal power plants.

Increasing the country’s power generation capacity and preventing blackouts during the peak consumption periods have been among the Energy Ministry’s top priorities since the current government administration took office in August 2021.

To this end, the ministry had put it on the agenda to increase the capacity of thermal power plants by 5,300 MW by the current Iranian calendar year’s summer time peak consumption period (starting on June 22).

Back in August 2021, Energy Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian announced that his ministry was planning to boost the country’s power generation capacity by 35,000 MW over the next four years.

The mentioned figure would be achieved through the construction of the thermal power plants with 15,000 MW of capacity, and renewable power plants with the capacity of 10,000 MW by the public and private sectors, as well as the construction of new power plants with 10,000 megawatts capacity by large industries.

Over the past decade, constant temperature rising and the significant decrease in rainfalls across Iran have put the country in a hard situation regarding electricity supply during peak consumption periods.

In this regard, the Energy Ministry has been following new programs to meet the country’s power demand during peak periods and to prevent outages.

Constructing new units in the country’s power plants and also building new power plants for major industries are among the mentioned programs that are being pursued seriously by the ministry in collaboration with other related government entities.

The Islamic Republic’s total power generation capacity currently stands at about 85,500 gigawatts most of which is supplied by thermal power plants.

Currently, combined cycle power plants account for the biggest share of the country’s total power generation capacity followed by gas power plants.